The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies for Building a Learning Organization

Three patterns exist side by side. The reliance on the short-term fix grows stronger, while efforts to fundamentally correct the real problem grow weaker, and the problem symptom alternately improves and deteriorates…

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Each side’s performance either declines or stays level and low, while enmity or competitiveness increases over…

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quick-fix loop in “Shifting the…

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delays are often a source of waste; removing delays is a key method for speeding up cycle time.

Each of the partners recognizes that they could mutually support each other’s success—as shown by the large outer loop. However, as they take independent action to improve results, they respond more attentively to their local needs than their partner’s. Each partner’s “solution” turns out to be unintentionally obstructive to their counterpart’s suc

To improve their results, the manufacturers pushed even more heavily on promotions, blaming the distributors for their troubles; and the distributors, blaming…

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The commons might be natural resources, open space, human effort, financial capital, production capacity, or market size—anything which groups of individuals depend upon in common.

Each “fundamental solution” would suggest a different sense of appropriate leverage. That’s why, especially in teams, it’s important to suspend your preconceptions about which “solution” fits the slot, and instead try to explore, as an interfuncional group, the deeper sources of the problem.

Strengthen the long-term solution. If you are not achieving your fundamental goals, then you may require a more clearly articulated goal.

The solution (or solutions) are obvious and immediate; they relieve the problem symptom quickly. But they divert attention away from the real or fundamental source of the problem, which becomes weaker as less attention is paid to it. This reinforces the perception that there is no other way out except the symptomatic solution.